“I’m sort of over Audrey,” I said to Miriam. “But I do love Cary Grant.”
“Want to go with me?” she asked.
“Okay,” I said, though I meant to say no.
“Great,” she said. “We’ll go to dinner first. A kosher Chinese restaurant near the theater, the one with the tropical drinks.”
“I can’t.”
Chinese food was impossible to keep track of mathematically: so many disparate items, shared plates, fried foods, starchy sauces.
“No?” asked Miriam.
“I have a work dinner,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, that would be the whole fun of it. Dinner and a movie. What about tomorrow?”
I thought about the possibility of all these calories bleeding into the rest of the week: a sundae now, Chinese food tomorrow. The whole month could be infiltrated if I wasn’t careful! No, it was better to keep this madness confined to today, Day of the Peppermint Plotz, as it would now be known in the Hebrew calendar. Tomorrow I could get back to my regime again and stay there forever.
“You know what?” I said. “I think I can get out of the dinner tonight.”
“Great!” she said, smiling. “Let’s meet at the Golden Dragon in Hollywood. Eight p.m.”
CHAPTER 23
I wanted to bring Miriam a gift, but I had no idea what to get her. Flowers seemed too obvious, too date-y. I didn’t even know how she felt about me. Was she crushing? On the fence? Totally platonic? She probably just wanted to be friends. Maybe this was how normal women made friends with other women. They invited them to do shit like eat in public.
I stopped at a beauty store after work and bought her a red lipstick, Ruský Rouge. I told myself I was getting her the gift as a thank-you for how generous she had been with the sundaes. Really, I knew that I was testing her, seeing how far she was willing to dip into my side of modernity, at least aesthetically. I assumed that she never wore makeup because of religious reasons. But if she’d be willing to put Ruský Rouge on her lips, what else would she be willing to try? It seemed significant that the gift was a girly one: a sexy, creamy tool passed from woman to woman.
The first time I’d ever masturbated, I’d straddled my pillow and fantasized that I was being passed between women this way. I imagined a roomful of women, each a different classmate’s mother, moving me from lap to lap, thigh to thigh, taking turns rocking and soothing me. Their gestures seemed nurturing, rather than lusty, and so, when I came, and came again, I was able to avoid thinking about what my pleasure could mean.
Over time, this fantasy became more overtly sexual—escalating from lap sitting into kissing, dry-humping. Every time I came, I would think, Oh god, please don’t let me like women. I forced myself to change the narrative, imagining the women with their husbands instead of me. I imagined the married couples rubbing against each other in abandoned offices, or the men eating their wives’ pussies in their backyards at night under the stars, poolside. In these fantasies, I got to be both woman and man: shifting my consciousness from the wife to the husband to the wife to the husband. This felt less shameful than two women.
In college, I’d been all bravado with Zoe and Cait, the adrenaline of novelty and the velocity of intrigue propelling me through my encounters with each of them. I was moving so fast that I didn’t really have time to be afraid. But now, going to meet Miriam, I felt the same Oh god I’d felt when I was young.
The truth was, I knew very little about Miriam. I knew that she was Jewish, a bit younger than me. I knew that she was very, very nice to me. I knew that around her, I felt like I could eat a sundae, or two sundaes, and maybe even Chinese food. I knew how she made me feel, which was full of confetti instead of blood. And so I reasoned, as I paid for the lipstick, that while my illusive pursuit of Cait had been based on an idea, at least with Miriam I was following a feeling.
CHAPTER 24
I stood outside the Golden Dragon, chain-chewing nicotine gum and waiting for Miriam. The evening air was cool, the sidewalks, cars, and buses cloaked in pink light. It was LA’s magic hour. The Golden Dragon looked to have once been magic too, but now it was in a state of disrepair: the corpse of somebody’s 1950s Hollywood regency-tiki dream.
The façade was a ranch-style stucco painted with banana leaves. It had survived the Cold War, only to fall prey to black mold. Two cracked lacquer Foo dogs, one missing an ear, stood guard at the red pagoda entrance. A turquoise neon sign over the pagoda blinked: G LDE DRA N.
But the place was surprisingly popular. Women in wigs kept entering and leaving with takeout. A party of ten drunk Chassidic men clambered in. There were also nonreligious patrons: an aging Hollywood rocker couple with full sleeves of ink, a group of what looked like set designers in paint-covered jeans. Each time the doors opened, I heard the sounds of animated voices buzzing over notes of Hawaiian guitar music.
I waited for ten minutes, then went in. It was dark and fragrant with fried food, a fun house of gilt bamboo mirrors and pink leather banquettes. I didn’t see Miriam, so I sat down at the rattan bar, beneath strands of lights in pinks, blues, yellows, and greens. A gold dragon hung from the ceiling over my head. Every minute or so, the dragon exhaled a stream of light and steam.
What was I doing here? It was like the place existed in a cipher—zero Yelp reviews, a web page with only a name and a menu, and then the place itself—a glowing black hole. I’d always wanted to escape to a black hole. I felt awed by the glow. And who was this random person I was meeting at a Chinese food restaurant bar? Technically, it was less random than a Tinder date or something. But it seemed weirder to go out with my yogurt scooper than with someone whose picture I’d only seen online.
Just calm down, I said to myself.
I am calm, I replied.
The bartender brought a bowl of fried, crunchy noodles, primed for duck sauce and spicy mustard. I hadn’t tasted those noodles in over a decade, and quickly commenced a parade of them, dipping and crunching and dipping again. I didn’t remember them being so delicious. Then Miriam walked in. I licked my fingers quickly and waved.
She was twenty minutes late. But she seemed completely unconcerned with time as she walked languidly toward me, opulently corpulent in a floral yellow robe-dress with kimono sleeves, a smile on her pale face.
She really exists, I thought, as though up until this point I’d thought the yogurt shop were an alternate reality, which vanished along with everything in it when I left.
“This is kind of funny,” I said when she sat down beside me.
“What?” she asked.
“This,” I said, motioning to her, then to me.
“Have you looked at the menu yet?” she asked, ignoring my assessment of the situation.
“No,” I lied.
I was afraid to let her know that I had been anticipating our time together. But she seemed to find nothing awkward about the situation, because she said, in a cheerful voice, “Well, in that case, let me order for both of us.”
She snapped her fingers at the bartender in a commanding way. This seemed like an odd thing for someone who worked in the service industry to do. People must have been doing that to her all day.
“Two Scorpion Bowls,” she said.
The drinks were brought to us in giant green ceramic bowls shaped like half watermelons, filled to the brim with maraschino cherries, pineapples, chunks of orange. The calorie count in one bowl alone was probably more than I allowed myself in two days.
“Try it,” said Miriam, smiling.
I put the pink straw to my lips and sipped. It was exquisite, like drinking a neon airbrushed rendering of a fruit punch island. It was its own tropical cosmos complete with coconuts, sea, and sunset. The drink warmed my chest and stomach immediately. Suddenly, I was way more at ease.
“Well, Aloha,” I said.
She laughed. “Stick with me.”
“Gonna fuck me up.”
“That’s a blessing.”
“I do feel chosen,�
� I said, taking more sips.
“What kind of Jew are you again?”
“I was Reform,” I said. “But now I’m sort of nothing.”
“Do you like being nothing?” she asked.
“It’s not a question of like. I didn’t feel—connected to Judaism spiritually.”
“That’s funny,” she said. “I never thought about feeling it. Maybe because I’ve always felt it. You do believe in god, though, right?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
This was getting kind of heavy for a first date or whatever we were doing. I swigged the drink.
“You don’t?” she asked.
“I mean, how can I know? God isn’t, like, texting me Hi or anything.”
“What do you think all this is?” she laughed, pointing to the lights and the dragons and the mirrors and the lanterns and the other diners and her and me.
I was silent.
“It’s god,” she said, as though it were obvious.
“Is this god?” I asked, pointing to the Scorpion Bowl.
“Oh, definitely.” She giggled. “That’s maybe the most holy of all. Half of my family are lushes.”
“Really?”
“No. But everybody loves to drink. People come over on Shabbat and hang out, and we all have too much. Happens every Friday. You should come. You’d really like it.”
Why was she so certain about everything?
“Do you live with your family?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. “Don’t you miss yours so far away?”
“Definitely not,” I said casually, as though that were true.
“Oh,” she said softly.
I examined the shapes and shades of her face, studying her. Each feature was its own inhabitable world. Her hair was the color of cream soda, or papyrus scrolls streaked with night light. Her eyebrows were the color of lions, lazy ones, dozing in sunlight or eating butter at night with their paws by lantern. Her eyes: icebergs for shipwrecking. Lashes: smoke and platinum. Her skin was the Virgin Mary, also very baby. Her nose: adorable, breathing. Upper lip: pink peony. Lower lip: rose. The teeth were trickier, but her inner mouth was easy—Valentine hearts and hell.
I reached into my purse and got the lipstick I had bought for her. I wanted to bring that inner mouth out, make everything red.
“I got you something,” I said, handing it to her.
The lipstick was in a little bag with some tissue paper.
“Oh, how nice,” she said, the way a stuffy old tourist lady might say when coming upon a scenic hayfield.
This was getting weirder by the minute. I took another sip of my drink and watched her lick her lower lip as she opened the package. Her papyrus hair shone in the bar lights.
“Oh,” she said when she pulled out the lipstick.
“I noticed you don’t wear makeup, but—”
“I don’t know how to do it right. My mom gets on me sometimes about wanting me to wear it. She said if I want to find a husband I’ll have to learn. She has no idea how to put it on either, so she can’t judge.”
Oh, great, a husband, I thought.
“You think I need it?” she asked.
“No, no,” I said.
“Put it on me, then.”
“Okay.”
I unwrapped the plastic and took the tube out of the cardboard box. I clicked it open.
“Pucker up,” I said.
She parted her lips. I’d never been so close to her face before. Her scent was very clean, soapy. The way she had her mouth open, just slightly, drove me crazy. I wanted to stick my finger in there. I wanted to touch her saliva, use it to trace the pronounced bow of her top lip, paint her with her own spit. Her lips were already so wet. They were too wet, in fact, for me to correctly put on the lipstick.
“Wait,” I said. “Let me do something.”
Gently I took my cloth napkin and blotted the moisture off her lips. Then I dabbed on the lipstick, lightly at first, then heavier, tapping out a gentle melody, then another. I put on way more than she needed, because I didn’t want to stop.
“Okay, okay,” she said.
I sat back on the bar stool and looked at her. It was witchcraft. She was transformed. With a few strokes of my hand, she’d gone from chaste lamb to pout mouth, suckling pup to pulp tart. Where before, her beauty was in her purity, the lipstick rendered her tramp-lipped, vamp-kissed, kind of a harlot. But what was hottest was the way her innocence still radiated, like a young girl who’d gotten into a woman’s makeup bag and wasn’t sure if she was going to get in trouble—but liked it.
“Wow,” I said, revealing her to herself in the mirrored side of the lipstick case.
“Mmmmm,” she said shyly, contemplating the small reflection. “It does look nice.”
“Vixen,” I said.
She smiled widely, smearing lipstick on her teeth.
May I lick them clean? I thought.
“So,” I said casually. “What’s good here?”
CHAPTER 25
“We’ll start with wonton soup,” Miriam said to the waiter, after we’d moved over to one of the pink banquettes. “Then we’ll have pepper steak, sesame chicken, chef’s special pan-fried noodle, and duck fried rice.”
The waiter blew air through his lips, as though doubtful we would eat all that food—or concerned that we might.
“Oh,” said Miriam. “We’ll also take a pu pu platter. Bring that after the wonton soup but before the rest of the food is served. Tell the chef to leave a little time.”
“I’m sorry, the pu pu platter is only for four or eight persons,” said the waiter.
“Four is fine,” said Miriam, winking at me.
Her teeth were clean of lipstick now, but she’d gotten it all over her straw. It belonged there somehow, with the watermelon bowl and cocktail umbrellas, like a retro pinup girl was out for a night on the town, devastating everyone.
“Anything else, Rach?” she asked.
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head.
“And two more of these,” Miriam said to the waiter, pointing to the Scorpion Bowls. “Very cold.”
“Oh, I’m okay,” I said.
“Fine, then one. She’ll share mine,” she said.
Then she looked at me.
“Can’t handle it?” she said, smirking.
She was more pleased with my reaction to the wonton soup. When I took my first bite, the soft noodle gave way to a garlicky inside, releasing a stream of salty broth in my mouth, and I moaned out loud.
“Good, right?” she asked.
“Oh my god,” I said with my mouth full of food.
“I told you this place was great,” she said. “Just because it’s kosher doesn’t mean it’s bad.”
“No, I wouldn’t have thought that,” I said.
Little did she know that any kind of Chinese food, good or bad, would have been amazing to me, as I had not tasted it in so many years.
“They do those wontons totally with chicken,” she said proudly. “No pork.”
“Wow.”
I watched the way she wielded her spoon, orchestrating every bite. First, she added spicy mustard to the bowl of broth. Then she moved methodically, wonton by wonton, breaking them in half, dunking the halves in duck sauce, before popping them in her mouth. I followed her lead, copied her method. The wontons burst in my mouth, a sweet-and-spicy party.
Then the pu pu platter arrived.
“Make way, make way,” called Miriam, as a wooden tiki bowl was set out before us, blazing in the middle with fire.
We began double-dunking everything on it: egg rolls, spring rolls, scallion pancakes, dumplings.
“We’re going to need more duck sauce,” she called to the waiter. “A lot more.”
And then again when our main dishes were served.
“More duck sauce,” she said, thrusting the bowl at him, as though it were his fault for not knowing we’d decided to bathe in it.
&n
bsp; I wanted to be submerged in all the sauces. The pepper steak was so good I would have eaten the gravy on its own. I sighed audibly as I plunked a bite of the tender meat in my mouth, escorted by a slice of onion. Was there wine in this motherfucker?
“Well?” asked Miriam.
“Moist,” I said.
“And?”
“Juicy.”
But my favorite was the sesame chicken. I liked the way the sweetness contrasted with the spice, also that there were no vegetables in it. I didn’t need to see another vegetable ever again. It was so decadent to put sesame seeds and flour on chicken and fry it up in a fattening sauce. This was what made it so delicious—the knowledge that underneath all those carbs and fat was chicken, which could have been healthy, but for the sake of taste was not. It was like a Fuck You to chicken. It was a Fuck You to everything!
“Fuck me!” I said in celebration as I took a joyful bite.
Miriam laughed, taking a sip from the Scorpion Bowl. Then she cut carefully into a piece of chicken with the side of her chopstick, elegantly and with slow precision, as though nothing had to be inhaled urgently. There was plenty, and there would be plenty. She surveyed her plate, strategizing, map-making. This was how it was going to happen, then this, then this. She took one noodle and draped it around the chicken, then put a piece of egg from the fried rice on top. She dunked it all in some of the spare chicken sauce and sesame seeds on the side of her plate. Then she raised it to her lips, closed her eyes, opened them again, and bit in. I watched her chewing thoughtfully.
“You seem interested in my chopsticks,” she said.
“I like the way you feed yourself.”
“Yes, I am good,” she said.
“You are.”
“Want me to make you a bite?”
“Okay.”
She used her chopsticks to assemble the same bite for me: chicken, noodle, egg, sauce. Then I used my chopsticks to take it off her plate. I popped the big bite in my mouth.
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